Away In Virginia, I See a Mustard Field And Think Of You

because the blue hills are like the shoulder and slopes
of your back as you sleep. Often I slip a hand under
your body to anchor myself to this earth. The yellow
mustard rises from a waving sea of green.

I think of us driving narrow roads in France, under
a tunnel of sycamores, my hair blowing in the hot wind,
opera washing out of the radio, loud. We are feeding
each other cherries from a white paper sack.

And then we return to everyday life, where we fall
into bed exhausted, fall asleep while still reading,
forget the solid planes of the body in the country
of dreams. I miss your underwear, soft from a thousand
washings, the socks you still wear from a store
out of business thirty years. I love to smell your sweat
after mowing grass or hauling wood; I miss the weight
on your side of the bed.

\- “Away In Virginia, I See a Mustard Field And Think Of You” by Barbara Crooker

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[A bit more housekeeping: all of the old haiku that lived in my sidebar. I’d given up on these even before switching to this new site, but would like to keep the record of them nonetheless.]

condensation formed
on my air conditioner
falls like summer rain

Te o uteba
kodama ni akuru
natsu no tsuki
– Basho

[I clap my hands
dawning in the echo
the summer moon]

“Mayonaka ya
Furikawari taru
Ama-no-gawa”
– Ransetsu

[“The dead of night.
Behold the Milky Way
Its situation is entirely changed.”]

“A lightning flash:
between the forest trees
I have seen water.”
– Masaoka Shiki

as spring flowers bloom
a time in my own life too
for new beginnings

early morning flight
en route to Park City for
Sundance yet again

not Jewish new year
but still a needed time for
cheshbon hanefesh

the first cold shower
even the monkey seems to want
a little coat of straw
– Basho

trees release fall leaves
then through quiet months rebuild
to spring beginnings

working round the clock
principal photography
creeps up day by day

still barely springtime
yet sun beats hard as summer
on midtown lunch crowds

three years of haiku
have I started to run out
of topic ideas?

a b c d e
f g h i j k l
m n o p q

done with jet-setting
now en route to JFK
glad to come back home

the blog lies fallow
victim of cyan’s success
and my lack of time

so much work to do
yet too sick with winter flu
to be productive

one step into the
water, then one step more; soon
we’re over our heads

last autumn leaves fall
onto new york winter streets
as cold rain drizzles

how i love you Jess
totally adorable
yet totally nuts

jessica tells me
it’s time to change the haiku;
my last was ‘whiny’

jessica tells me
it’s time to change the haiku;
my last was ‘whiny’

like an idiot
re-sprained my ankle again;
it’s back to crutches

now a married man
my life goes on pretty much
the same as before

at just past midnight
i awake as, in her sleep
Jess punches me, hard.

twenty nine years and
still no fucking clue about
what’s going on here

hot as a sauna
muggy summer air descends
on Manhattan streets

with jess out of town
I revert to single life;
will my liver hold?

memorial day
new york’s pasty thighs first see
the cruel light of day

note to self: next time,
please, don’t even think about
opening a gym

brutal hangover
from drinks at Bungalow 8
much too old for this

passover begins
as do intense cravings for
all carbohydrates

burning the candle
at both ends, I can barely
keep my eyes open

fundraising again
why did I sign up to be
an entrepreneur?

on a plane again
feeling thankful I’m not a
traveling salesman

so much travel planned
by month’s end how will I still
recognize our bed?

back to the office;
after one day, how am I
already behind?

ball drops in Times Square
as on my nearby corner
new year swings to life

snow melts to puddle,
tracked by boot from city streets,
on the subway floor

first winter snowfall
whitens dirty New York streets;
I trudge towards home

five syllables here
next seven more on this line
then one final five

amtrak to new york
brown leaves still cling to fall trees
painting the window

still shopping for rings,
counting down to question pop,
surprisingly zen.

fundraising again
for Cyan; this is when I
wish for a trust fund

No time for blogging.
No time, in fact, for even
this haiku column.

Cool spring showers fall
washing clean the city streets
slowly, the sun sets

spring hyacinth buds
on my windowsill defy
dark storm clouds outside

first snowflakes falling
outside cool office windows,
gusts of winter air

Quiet apartment,
windows closed against fall air,
newly leafless streets.

late summer shower
gives way to gentle moonlight;
leaves begin to turn

On this Friday night
your ass damn better be at
Oh in Ohio

quiet June morning
winding paths through Central Park
dappled with sunlight

a Sunday morning
light streams in through my window
I dream, half awake

on my window ledge
small white seagull considers
the Hudson nearby

cloudy spring morning;
I lie half awake in bed,
stare out the window.

New striped boxer briefs
will tonight be field tested
in NYC bars

with so much to do
i sit and stare at my list
unsure where to start

after a few drinks
it seems I can no longer
count syllables

With younger brother
in town, my liver is sure
to greatly suffer

Spring begins to creep
back onto streets where winter
never took full root

Twenty-three inches
unceremoniously
dumped onto our streets.

Holy fucking shit
big things brewing with Cyan;
this all just might work.

Fundraising again,
constant toll of startup life.
Buddy, spare a dime?

New York’s winter air
swirls unseasonably warm
in through my window.

Back in NYC,
catching up on piles of work,
back to blogging soon.

Rolling green duffle
packed full to seams near bursting
for trip to Sundance

Ode to MLK:
the civil rights stuff was good
but the day off rocks.

Do you mind if I,
instead of going to work,
just go back to bed?

Sitting at my desk,
buried under piles of work
like winter snowdrifts.

Really, is there a
better appetizer than
pigs in a blanket?

A brand new side-blog
wherein I self-aggrandize
in perfect haiku

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Self-Pity

by D.H. Lawrence

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

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A Matter of Degree

I’m in Denver at the moment, having come in to town to watch my brother graduate from business school – an event that, officially, makes me the least educated member of my family.

The graduation ceremony itself, on top of the usual array of addresses and pontifications, involved every single graduating graduate student’s name being announced, as they headed up to shake the Chancellor’s hand and receive their diploma.

This was, in short, not a fast process. So, several hours in, to entertain myself, I scawled out a bit of poetry on the back of my program:

Commencement
[A triplet, in haiku verse]

I.
Pomp and circumstance
book-end a mind-numbing line
of young graduates

II.
A sea of black robes
undifferentiated
they flow across stage

III.
I sit in the crowd
ready to stab out my eye
with a dull pencil

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fiction

On a friend’s recommendation, I picked up the Gotham Writers’ Workshop guide, Writing Fiction. Having fallen too far off the fiction writing bandwagon, having slowly inched myself back towards it through the lesser demands of screenwriting, I hoped the book might push me the last few steps to once again cranking our short stories (or, god forbid, longer fiction forms).

A central aspect of the book are the multiple ‘your turn’ segments, chances for the reader to leap into action and ply ideas on (digital) paper. As I’m exceedingly lazy, I’ve realized I can likely recycle some of these exercises by posting them here. So, to that end, I give you my (completely unedited) five minute free-write, beginning with the supplied phrase ‘Sam wasn

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anthologizing

Not wanting to appear all talk and no action, I’m unveiling Cyan Publishing’s first concrete project: a Best of Web Writing print anthology. [Nota bene: if you haven’t heard me mention Cyan Publishing, you should probably read the prior post first.]

The volume will be patterned after Houghton Mifflin’s great Best American Short Stories (or Best American Magazine Writing, etc.) series, collecting works in the body with a Contributors’ Notes section in the back (short biographies plus anything each writer feels compelled to add about included posts). Because blog posts tend to be shorter than stories, however, the current plan is to organize the body by topic (work, love, family, etc.) rather than only by author.

Each author will retain the copyright to their own work, and licensing will be non-exclusive, but authors will be compensated with a percentage of the book’s profits, in a way that’s closer to film’s model, and considerably more generous than publishing’s.

We’ll be selling the book directly through the soon-to-exist Cyan Publishing site, as well as through major online booksellers (Amazon, B&N, etc.) and (through a relationship with Ingram Book Distribution, the largest wholesale distributor) any real-world bookstores we can convince to wedge the book onto their shelves. To encourage stores to do so, we’ll also be putting together a series of readings, where any of the authors who are nearby and willing will have a chance to share their work in their own voice.

More generally, I’m hoping the book gets all of the writers in front of a host of new readers. Web writing has long been marginalized, and I think unfairly so; there’s a lot of great stuff posted regularly by talented individuals, and this should be a good chance to share that fact with the world.

By now, I have the first ten or so writers in mind, but I’m ideally looking for another fifteen more. If you have thoughts on talented bloggers I may not be reading, or on particularly good posts that warrant inclusion, shoot me an email or leave a comment pointing me in the right direction.

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the write idea

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on a new screenplay called Twelve Steps, a very dark romantic comedy about a young guy who realizes he’s an asshole. The story is structured according to the twelve steps of addiction recovery, though they aren’t acknowledged explicitly by any of the characters; instead, each segment is simply preceded by a black interstitial card with white text, as in “Step 1: Admitting you have a problem.” Many of the steps deal with a ‘higher power’, and in the context of the story, love is the force that eventually redeems the protagonist. Sadly, however, the poor sap gets his heart crushed along the way, and though he ends up a better person, it isn’t clear that he’s better off nice but miserable than he was when obnoxious but happy.

Yesterday evening, however, sitting down to work through some scenes, I instead ended up spilling out the outline of an entirely different, and certainly more commercial story – something that goes against my natural nothing-but-indie inclinations. The new story’s a heist film – a clich

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photo fiction

 

He only thought about her when the weather turned cold, when the sudden appearance of fur-lined boots clomping on pavement, of breath steaming visibly from lipsticked mouths, of wool gloves and scarves rustling quietly against thick winter jackets added together to conjure up her memory.

Even then, she came to him in pieces: the soapdish hollow of her clavicle. She came to him in sideways glances: pretending not to look back over her shoulder as she tossed her hair. She came to him as single words spoken, as textures he could almost feel pressed against his fingers.

When she came to him like this, he would stop midstride, concentrate, try to coalesce the parts of her into a full, vivid whole, before the jostling passersby could bring him back to the present, where he stood alone on the sidewalk, feeling oddly hollow, a dull, cold pain in his stomach, his throat, his chest.

 

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